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How Did Jane Addams Contribute To History

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Women who make history have gone unrecognized for too long. There are many women who have made amazing accomplishments and have contributed to America. One of these women is Jane Addams. Addams is most known for her co-founding of the Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago in 1889, but her achievements stem far beyond. Jane Addams’ activism contributed to multiple turning points in U.S. history, and her actions made greatly significant contributions. Jane Addams is a prominent historical figure who achieved a lot during her lifetime. Jane Addams was valedictorian of her class at Rockford Female Seminary. After Addams graduated she traveled to England and visited Toynbee Hall, a settlement house there. Here she gained inspiration to …show more content…

Jane Addams was a women’s rights activist who believed that women should “search out opportunities to realize them”. She collaborated with reformers to advocate for shorter work days for women and women’s suffrage. Her activism in women’s rights ultimately contributed to one of the greatest turning points for women in history: earning suffrage. She also worked with social reformers to gain more rights for poor workers. Among these reforms, she championed tenement house regulations, factory inspections, and worker’s compensation. These reforms were part of the Progressive Party’s platform which ultimately changed America by increasing government influence to ensure higher living and working standards to the country’s destitute. This turning point in social reforms was influenced by Addams’ reform work and allowed for better livelihoods and opportunities for poor workers. In addition to women, Addams advocated for other underrepresented groups including children, blacks, and immigrants. Addams pushed for juvenile rights which lead to the establishment of the first juvenile-court law. She additionally fought against injustice for blacks and immigrants. Continual collective efforts by Jane Addams and her fellow activists over time lead to turning points later in history. Reformers like Addams influenced Supreme Court justices who eventually …show more content…

In 1889, Addams established the Hull House in Chicago in efforts to help immigrants and the poor during the Gilded Age. The Hull House consisted of a community kitchen, gymnasium, a day nursery and residence options. The settlement house offered schooling for all ages, clubs, and even a theatre group called the “Hull House Players”. The Hull House was originally a run-down mansion, but with funds from supporters (mainly women), it was transformed into a settlement house. Jane’s orations recruited wealthy donors to support her cause. At the Hull House’s hight, it hosted 9,000 people per week. The main goals of the Hull House, which were achieved, were to assimilate immigrants and help victims of harsh industrialism. Immigrants could be taught to speak English through the schooling offered at the house which opened up many possibilities for them in America. Thus, Jane Addams’ Hull House was historically significant because it gave poor people and immigrants a leg up during a time of harsh capitalism and ultimately gave them more

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462 Words | 2 Pages

Jane Addams was a significant person in history. First, she was a big part of Progressive Reform. She created the famous, "Hull House," which was a settlement house that opened its doors to European immigrants. The Hull House was made by Jane Addams and friend, Ellen Starr. The Hull House was used to give immigrants important lessons on hygiene, English, and sanitation.

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It gained momentum while America's imperialist ambitions expanded globally. Jane Adams represented the struggle of progressive reformers via Hull House. The Hull House expanded the services like childcare, education, health care, etc. It was among the first not-for-profit organizations in the country along with the possibility of more individual donors joining hands with similar organizations to expand the reach of services. She and the other Hull House participants provided the marginalized members of society with immediate help and in the process also advocated for wide scale social and legislative changes.

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For the time being where women were encouraged to be homemakers and stay inside the walls of their homes instead of working, Clara Barton made a huge impact and took on many roles that were focused on helping others. Clara Barton was a nurse for a good portion of her life, a teacher of the illiterate, and Clara founded the American location for the Red Cross. Barton grew in to one of the first women to help to build a case for women’s rights and their value in being contributing members to society. Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born on Christmas Day, 1821, in North Oxford, Massachusetts.

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Susan B. Anthony was born into a Quaker family, with the hope that everyone would one day be treated equal. She denied a chance to speak at a temperance convention because she was a woman(Susan B. Anthony). From this point on, she knew that she needed to make a change. Susan B. Anthony, because of her intense work involving women 's’ rights, highly influenced all of the societies and beliefs that were yet to come. She employed a huge role in our history because of the fact that she advocated for women’s rights, for the integration of women in the workforce, and for the abolition of slavery.

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Jane Addams was a remarkable woman in American history. She was born in Cedarville, Illinois on September 6, 1860 and died on May 21, 1935. She is an extraordinary woman in history because she established one of the very first settlements in the United States known as the Hull House in Chicago, Illinois in 1889 and was recognized worldwide in the first part of the twentieth century for being a pioneer social worker, and internationalist, as well as a feminist. Jane’s full name is Laura Jane Addams and she was born as the eighth sibling out of nine children. Her father was an affluent miller, businessman, and a prosperous state senator; he had several important friends.

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Jane Addam’s book, Twenty Years at Hull House, describes the work her and her colleagues did in their Settlement house on the West Side of Chicago. Jane Addams was a pioneer of social work who focused much of her efforts in working with immigrant populations and those in need, along with working to make change at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels. This paper will address the ways she went about creating change, the American values that guided her social work, along with ways that the principles and values of her work are still ones used today in social work. Jane Addams and Ellen Star opened Hull house on September 18, 1889. Her inspiration for Hull house was spawned by her visit to the London settlement house, Toynbee Hall.

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“She advocated woman’s suffrage because she believed that women’s votes would provide the margin necessary to pass social legislation she favored” (History.com). Addams even wrote a paper called “Why Women Should Vote”. She expressed that the world is merely an extension of their house and no one should be scared for what they belive in. She continued to fight until women got their right to vote in 1920 and then moved onto other issues that women had. Overall, she completed the movement with a sucessful victory winning the right for women to

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Not only was Jane Addams a leader in the American Progressivism Movement, but she contributed in many other aspects of American history. Her most notable contribution is Hull House, one of the first settlements in America, she created in the West Side of Chicago in 1889. Jane Addams’ motivation for creating the Hull House was not only what I think she felt as her moral and religious obligation to provide some type of relief to those suffering around her, but everyone else’s lack of action and her need to find some type of meaning in her life. After her father’s death and her traveling through Europe for six years Jane began experiencing self-doubt and depression which caused her to notice a lack of meaning in the “comfortable life of a privileged woman” (Lane).

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Jane Addams once firmly stated, "Unless our conception of patriotism is progressive, it cannot hope to embody the real affection and the real interest of the nation. " Her mission was to keep the people 's interest in the eyes of the country and to help them progress as a society in the wake of the corrupted Gilded Age. With the American people in the grasps of big industries and immigrants looking for a better life struggled in a nation where the dollar sign was held over politicians and the middle class and poor people, they needed help. Jane Addams, a kind woman who established a settlement house for the poor nineteenth ward of Chicago, had an astounding influence upon American society through social reforms in urban cities and influence

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920 Words | 4 Pages

She started the first settlement house, it was called The Hull House. It was created in 1889 in Chicago’s west side. She realized that parts of Chicago were very diverse and very poor(Sheflin, Progressive Movement). This was a big first step for Addams towards solving social problems created by urban industrialism. She had immigrant neighbors and educated female friends

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563 Words | 3 Pages

Amelia Earhart was one of the world's best known aviator. She was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean as a passenger. She always had an inspiration for airplanes since a child. She fulfilled her passion for flying by traveling around the world. She faced many challenges while trying to fly around the world.

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318 Words | 2 Pages

It was not until we visited Toynbee Hall that is where we came up with the idea of Hull House. Hull House was first designed for designed for teaching art and literary classes for the immigrants. But soon, it included English classes, Sewing and Cooking classes, and also Daycare for families. Since Mothers and fathers had to work, nobody was available to watch the kids, so they were left in the house by themselves.

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2149 Words | 9 Pages

Addams describes the settlement in her book, Twenty Years a Hull-House, “A settlement is above all a place for enthusiasms, a spot to which those who have a passion for the equalization of human joys and opportunities are early attracted” (184). Addams pushed for sanitation, safe working conditions, womens rights and suffrage, tenement house regulation, child labor laws, eight hour work days, and fair wages. Jacob Riis was a mukracker and photo journalist who chronicled immigrant life in urban cities (Nguyen 6). Riis started as a police reporter/photographer in New York and used his experience to put together, “How the Other Half Lives.” It was a piece exposing the horrible lives of the immigrant working class; furthermore, the book displayed pictures of people sleeping on floor mattresses, dirty children wondering the alleys, no windows in crowded tenement houses, and kids digging through human waste in the city (Nguyen

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1091 Words | 5 Pages

Through the Children’s Bureau they were able to decrease infant mortality and improve the living standards of children in orphanages. The settlement houses improved healthcare and education for immigrants. This is all a result of women’s growing place in society because of the progressive

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1377 Words | 6 Pages

No other place in the world could rival the US’s diversity, leading to many greats things in the US immediately, and in the long term. For example, Doc 3 shows Chinese workers in a salmon cannery, bringing along their knowledge of fish and how to prepare it. Something as small as this proves the larger idea that foreign immigrants bring along with them their traditions that make the US a more complex and interesting place to live. Due to this new diversity, places such as the “Hull House” were created to help immigrants adapt to life in the US, as well as a place to interact with other cultures. As Hilda Statt Polacheck said, “Hull House was an oasis in a desert of disease and monotony.

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